Friday, 24 March 2017

Mosul: "They're all putting their lives at risk to flee a city under siege."

Mosul: "They're all putting their lives at risk to flee a city under siege."

On the 19 of February, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) opened a field
trauma hospital with surgical capacity in a village to the south of
Mosul. It is composed of two operating theatres, one intensive care
unit, an emergency room, an in-patient ward and other necessary support
facilities.

War-related trauma

The
MSF team working in the hospital, composed primarily of Iraqi surgeons,
doctors and nurses, only has the capacity to operate on the most
severe life

threatening cases, known as “red cases”; those that can wait are referred to hospitals further afield.

Since
it's opening, the facility has received more than 915 patients. Of
these, 763 suffered war-related trauma, 190 of whom were classified as
‘red’ cases in need of urgent lifesaving surgery and 421 of whom were
classified as ‘yellow’ cases and stabilised before being referred to
other hospitals in the region.

More than half of the wounded were women (241 patients) and children under the age of 15 (240 patients).

Below are first-hand accounts from two MSF surgeons working in our trauma centre:

staff story: dr reginald

The following testimony is from Dr Reginald, a
66-year-old Belgian surgeon, after his last shift at MSF’s field trauma
hospital a few kilometres south of Mosul. He describes his six weeks
near Mosul as the toughest situation he has experienced during his long
MSF career.
I’ve been through many other wars; Syria, Liberia, Angola, Cambodia,
but I’ve never seen something like this. In the operating theatre every
case we receive is severe and almost every day we have to deal with mass
casualties.
Our patients can be of any age, any gender and suffering from any
sort of war wound: sniper attack, mortar shelling, airstrike, landmine,
and other explosions. They are all putting their life at risk to flee a
city under siege.The weather was bad, grey and cloudy with some rain so we received 20
war-wounded patients. But, when weather conditions are good we receive
huge influxes of wounded men, women and children. When it’s cloudy or
rainy we receive fewer people. Now, we look at weather forecasts to best
prepare ourselves and to anticipate mass casualties.

The emergency field hospital has 8 emergency beds, 4 for severely
wounded and 4 for moderately wounded. Here, the medical teams discuss
ahead of a mass casualty simulation.

On one sunny afternoon, the ambulances started to arrive, one after
the other. Usually, the stabilisation posts close to the fighting alert
us when they are referring stabilised patients to our centre. But that
day, due to the chaos, it didn’t happen.
It was really tough. We had to transfer some of them because we
didn’t have the space to treat everybody, but alongside the Iraqi
doctors and nurses, we worked around the clock. It was sunny but we
never saw the sun as we operated on one person after another until 5 am
in the morning. At the end we had received around 100 patients, we were
exhausted. That day confirmed that our surgical unit was a frontline
surgical facility and we have since opened a second operating theatre to
increase our capacity.

As I finish my six-week assignment, I’m shocked by the number of
families dismembered by this war. So many mothers and fathers begged us
to save their son or daughter, as they were their only family members
left alive.
I’m impressed by the strength of the Iraqi people and by the generosity and hard work of our Iraqi colleagues.
We couldn't do this work without them.

Staff story: dr ahmed

Testimony from Dr Ahmed*, an Iraqi orthopaedic
surgeon who has worked for MSF since 2008 and has been working in MSF’s
field trauma hospital a few kilometres South of Mosul since mid-February
2017.
Yesterday morning we received a family of four: a mother, a father
and their two small boys. They had all been wounded by a mortar grenade.
The mother and father arrived dead so we worked around the clock on the
two brothers. But the head wound of the smallest boy was too severe so
he passed away and only managed to save the nine-year-old. I wonder how
he could survive and how he will survive. From his whole family, he is
the only one left.

If I could, I would take a picture for each of the
patients I treated to tell their stories and to remember them. Here I
operate only on red cases but I would like to do more.

Dr ahmedmsf orthopaedic surgeon

Then, yesterday afternoon we received another boy, this time a
ten-year-old. He arrived with his left leg almost amputated by a mortar
shelling. We went straight to the operating theatre but he lost a lot of
blood on the way to our hospital. For two hours we did orthopaedic
surgery, then my colleague did a laparotomy for another hour but during
the night he died.

A mother with her baby in our field hospital, Mosul, Iraq.

We try to do everything we can, but sometimes it’s not enough. If I
could, I would take a picture for each of the patients I treated to tell
their stories and to remember them. Here I operate only on red cases
but I would like to do more. I’d also like to follow the yellow cases,
the ones we refer to other facilities. I would like to take care of
them, to do all I can to help these people who have been through such
terrible suffering.

Privately funded

In Iraq, MSF relies on more than 1600 international and Iraqi staff
for its medical and humanitarian work in 10 governorates. In order to
ensure its independence, MSF does not accept funding from any
government, religious committee or international agency for its programs
in Iraq, relying solely on private donations from the general public
around the world to carry out its work.